In other areas, Federal agents and prosecutors have achieved some notable successes in recent years going after telemarketing swindlers who target old people, but the problem persists.
Although these two goals were purportedly coequal, in practice, by requiring survivors to cooperate with law enforcement in order to obtain U nonimmigrant status, benefits to police and prosecutors are achieved at the expense of the victims Congress sought to protect, exacerbating the very vulnerabilities the U visa was intended to address.
One public prosecutor, Noha al-Zeiny, achieved instant fame for blowing the whistle on her own experience of fraud, in a contest between a Brotherhood candidate and a former adviser to Mr Mubarak.
Another signal of the administration's emphasis on the enforcement side of drug control was the reported choice of Representative Asa Hutchinson, a former federal prosecutor in Arkansas who achieved national prominence as one of the House managers in former President Clinton's impeachment trial, to become the next head of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The judge noted that prosecutors "could not achieve the marvelous successes they've had in sophisticated crimes, like insider trading, without asking judges to give a very substantial benefit to cooperators".
Forward-thinking prosecutors, judges and participants in the criminal justice system, like those operating drug courts in Seattle, where I practiced law for many years, understand that success must be measured not simply by the number of convictions achieved by a prosecutor's office, but also by a prosecutor's ability to effect long-term crime reduction.
Throughout my term, we worked hard to attract talented prosecutors from diverse backgrounds, and we achieved a measure of success.
Prosecutors may have thought they had achieved such a moment last week involving the indictment's charge that Mr. Stevens had received a sweetheart deal on a $44,000 car.
But far more could be achieved by getting the police and prosecutors to take a stand against misogyny and abuse and actually apply existing law.
"Prosecutors," he said, "could not achieve the major successes they've achieved in complex crimes like insider trading without asking judges to give a very substantial benefit to cooperators".
